Have you seen Current TV or checked out current.com? I saw the video below while watching the channel a few nights ago, and I thought it was an incredibly compelling story. The focus of the piece is on organizer Sampat Dal and the revolutionary group known as the "Gulabi Gang," which is a women-led, grass-roots organization in northern India that is willing to get physical while battling for women's rights. I've done a little research since then on Sampat Dal, and I've read some things that I find troubling--hints that her desire for women's empowerment has led her to embrace a role-reversal of sorts (young men who jump when she snaps her fingers, for example)--but mostly I think this is incredibly inspiring and all-around fanfuckingtastic. Hope you do, too.
PS: I broke some bones in my left foot. I am on Darvocet. It's not so bad.
Jukebox Hero
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Triple Scoop: Contemporary Blues
Hope it's ok if I don't attempt to explain or detail the past six weeks or so... There were days and there were nights, and they mostly seemed to follow one another in a pattern of sorts, though you couldn't always prove that by me or by my behavior.
There was also lots and lots of music, though there always is, you know?
Lots and lots.
While listening to the aforementioned lots and lots of music, I decided to give in to my compulsion to group and listen to music in sets of threes. Further, I have decided today to use this convention to grease my reappearance here--I can just about always talk about music, no matter the noise in my head or the heavy in my heart. So, today's Triple Scoop is comprised of Here Comes That Weird Chill [EP] by the Mark Lanegan Band, Dislocation Blues by Chris Whitley & Jeff Lang, and Magic Potion by The Black Keys.
Mark Lanegan used to play with The Screaming Trees, of Seattle grunge fame, though he has been releasing solo albums since 1990. He's a master of collaboration and has played with folks including Josh Homme, PJ Harvey, and The Twilight Singers, and the album he recorded with Isobel Campbell in 2005, Ballad of the Broken Seas, is startlingly beautiful and eclectic, and I digress...
There was also lots and lots of music, though there always is, you know?
Lots and lots.
While listening to the aforementioned lots and lots of music, I decided to give in to my compulsion to group and listen to music in sets of threes. Further, I have decided today to use this convention to grease my reappearance here--I can just about always talk about music, no matter the noise in my head or the heavy in my heart. So, today's Triple Scoop is comprised of Here Comes That Weird Chill [EP] by the Mark Lanegan Band, Dislocation Blues by Chris Whitley & Jeff Lang, and Magic Potion by The Black Keys.
Mark Lanegan used to play with The Screaming Trees, of Seattle grunge fame, though he has been releasing solo albums since 1990. He's a master of collaboration and has played with folks including Josh Homme, PJ Harvey, and The Twilight Singers, and the album he recorded with Isobel Campbell in 2005, Ballad of the Broken Seas, is startlingly beautiful and eclectic, and I digress...
So, anyway, Lanegan's ...Weird Chill EP is a "preview" of his 2004 release Bubblegum, which I have somehow never acquired. Strange that I never picked it up, because this "preview" of it is just mesmerizing. The music drones and burbles with bluesy, rocksy, gospely sound while Lanegan wraps his gorgeous baritone around guilt and longing and hope and fear and heartache. There is something industrial here, mixed with something ancient, and it moans and it groans and I feel it in my stomach and in my chest.
[Take nice, long licks here: (1) Methamphetamine Blues; (4) Message to Mine; (9) Sleep With Me]
I had heard the names "Jeff Lang" and "Chris Whitley" before, and I knew that they were both blues guitarists--Lang by way of Australia--and I knew that Whitley had a fervent cult following and that he had recently died, but that was all I knew until I stumbled upon Dislocation Blues. Lucky stumble, that, because this album--a mix of traditionals, originals, and covers (Dylan, Prince-!)--with its lap steel beauty and haunting, ethereal vocals, with its mix of jaunts and romps and dusty, old slow-motion blues, was totally worth a fall. And fall, I did, people. Barely a minute into the menacing, hypnotic "Stagger Lee," and I was flat out on the floor. The album mostly feels raw and primal, but there's this fragility, there, too--maybe it's in the falsetto vocals, maybe it's in knowing that Whitley didn't know he was dying when he recorded this (he was dead within months of completing this work).
Anyway, like Lanegan's ...Weird Chill, Dislocation Blues hits me deep, and it, too, seems to meld the old and the new, yet in different measures than Lanegan's work, with much more focus on the keeningrural than the fuzzyindustrial. I find that I am liking this form of blues very much; I aim to track down other stuff by Whitley for sure, and possibly Lang.
I had heard the names "Jeff Lang" and "Chris Whitley" before, and I knew that they were both blues guitarists--Lang by way of Australia--and I knew that Whitley had a fervent cult following and that he had recently died, but that was all I knew until I stumbled upon Dislocation Blues. Lucky stumble, that, because this album--a mix of traditionals, originals, and covers (Dylan, Prince-!)--with its lap steel beauty and haunting, ethereal vocals, with its mix of jaunts and romps and dusty, old slow-motion blues, was totally worth a fall. And fall, I did, people. Barely a minute into the menacing, hypnotic "Stagger Lee," and I was flat out on the floor. The album mostly feels raw and primal, but there's this fragility, there, too--maybe it's in the falsetto vocals, maybe it's in knowing that Whitley didn't know he was dying when he recorded this (he was dead within months of completing this work).
Anyway, like Lanegan's ...Weird Chill, Dislocation Blues hits me deep, and it, too, seems to meld the old and the new, yet in different measures than Lanegan's work, with much more focus on the keeningrural than the fuzzyindustrial. I find that I am liking this form of blues very much; I aim to track down other stuff by Whitley for sure, and possibly Lang.
[Lick and lick and lick: (1) Stagger Lee; (10) Underground; (12) Motion Bride]
So, the Black Keys and their Magic Potion. I know everyone's talking about Attack & Release, but I picked up both albums at the same time, about a month ago, and I listened to Magic Potion first, and so I've been giving it more of my aural attention. Besides, I kind of have this need to progress chronologically through a discography, so... Anyway, wow, man. I know I'm a little late to the game and that I need to pick up their first few releases, but with Magic Potion, these two monstrously talented dudes (guitarist-vocalist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney) totally win my bluesy, greasy, garage-y heart. Thing is, their music also moves my dark, horny, achin' heart. So, you know, that's almost all of me ; ) This album was recorded in the drummer's basement, in Akron, Ohio, and everything about it feels close, dangerous, intense. The sound is lo-fi and humongous, it thuds and it rumbles, and it is exquisite in its controlled chaos. And if I hear something industrial in ...Weird Chill, I hear it, too, in Magic Potion; yet, there is also something here that feels, somehow, post-industrial.
As I write this, I am realizing that there are actual musical genres called "industrial" and "post-industrial," and I'm not really sure where those categories and my own notions of these terms meet and overlap, if at all. When I use "industrial" in reference to Lanegan and to the Black Keys, I mean that there is this sound in the music that is fuzzed-out and makes me think of the noise of factories; there is also something in the rhythms--vocal as well as instrumental--that makes me think of the rhythm of factory machinery. Beyond those observations, I hear something in this music that, for me, evokes the soullessness and disconnectedness of the industrial-age.
So, I hear all of that in Magic Potion, but--and maybe it's just because I know these guys grew up and continue to live in Akron, Ohio, maybe it's because I know they recorded one of their albums in an abandoned tire factory, maybe it's because I have an affinity for cities that have been butchered and left to rot by industrialism--I also hear something that sounds like alienation and desperation and that makes me think of crumbling factories, boarded up houses, and burned-out cars, empty lots, waist-high weeds, and broken glass ... the mood and decay of the post-industrial age.
So, the Black Keys and their Magic Potion. I know everyone's talking about Attack & Release, but I picked up both albums at the same time, about a month ago, and I listened to Magic Potion first, and so I've been giving it more of my aural attention. Besides, I kind of have this need to progress chronologically through a discography, so... Anyway, wow, man. I know I'm a little late to the game and that I need to pick up their first few releases, but with Magic Potion, these two monstrously talented dudes (guitarist-vocalist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney) totally win my bluesy, greasy, garage-y heart. Thing is, their music also moves my dark, horny, achin' heart. So, you know, that's almost all of me ; ) This album was recorded in the drummer's basement, in Akron, Ohio, and everything about it feels close, dangerous, intense. The sound is lo-fi and humongous, it thuds and it rumbles, and it is exquisite in its controlled chaos. And if I hear something industrial in ...Weird Chill, I hear it, too, in Magic Potion; yet, there is also something here that feels, somehow, post-industrial.
As I write this, I am realizing that there are actual musical genres called "industrial" and "post-industrial," and I'm not really sure where those categories and my own notions of these terms meet and overlap, if at all. When I use "industrial" in reference to Lanegan and to the Black Keys, I mean that there is this sound in the music that is fuzzed-out and makes me think of the noise of factories; there is also something in the rhythms--vocal as well as instrumental--that makes me think of the rhythm of factory machinery. Beyond those observations, I hear something in this music that, for me, evokes the soullessness and disconnectedness of the industrial-age.
So, I hear all of that in Magic Potion, but--and maybe it's just because I know these guys grew up and continue to live in Akron, Ohio, maybe it's because I know they recorded one of their albums in an abandoned tire factory, maybe it's because I have an affinity for cities that have been butchered and left to rot by industrialism--I also hear something that sounds like alienation and desperation and that makes me think of crumbling factories, boarded up houses, and burned-out cars, empty lots, waist-high weeds, and broken glass ... the mood and decay of the post-industrial age.
[Lick well here: (2) Your Touch; (3) You're the One; (8) The Flame]
So. I guess that's it--today's Triple Scoop of Contemporary Bluesberry. Lean back, settle in, and, you know, don't be worried about getting some on you...
So. I guess that's it--today's Triple Scoop of Contemporary Bluesberry. Lean back, settle in, and, you know, don't be worried about getting some on you...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
